No abstract

Stormwater ponds can serve as retention hotspots for phosphorus (P) moving out of the urban environment. This retention may be reduced by P speciation that reduces the bioavailability of P to primary producers and alters its mobility in sediments. Here we examined the mobility and fate of dissolved P in urban stormwater ponds with a set of complementary field measurements and short‐term laboratory and field experiments. We measured the types and amount of P in water column and sediments of urban stormwater ponds. We further assessed the mobility of different P types in pond sediments in the field and rates of P release from sediment cores maintained under laboratory conditions. Finally, we assessed P uptake rates by pond algal communities using short‐term bioassay experiments. We found that dissolved organic P was highly prevalent in urban pond water and sediments and that this type of P was mobile within sediments and could be released under high or low O2 conditions. We also found highly variable P demand by algae among stormwater ponds and that algal growth responses to P was correlated to water column N:P ratios. Altogether, our results indicate an important role for organic phosphorus cycling in urban stormwater ponds, which likely constrains the overall retention efficiency in these aquatic ecosystems.

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The increasing use of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) in consumer products raises concerns regarding the environmental exposure and impact of AgNPs on natural aquatic environments. Here, we investigated the effects of environmentally relevant AgNP concentrations on the natural plankton communities using in situ enclosures. Using twelve lake enclosures, we tested the hypotheses that AgNP concentration, dosing regimen, and capping agent (poly-vinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) vs. citrate) exhibit differential effects on plankton communities. Each of the following six treatments was replicated twice: control (no AgNPs added), low, medium, and high chronic PVP treatments (PVP-capped AgNPs added continuously, with target nominal concentrations of 4, 16, and 64 μg/L, respectively), citrate treatment (citrate-capped AgNPs added continuously, target nominal concentrations of 64 μg/L), and pulse treatment (64 μg/L PVP-AgNPs added as a single dose). Although Ag accumulated in the phytoplankton, no statistically significant treatment effect was found on phytoplankton community structure or biomass. In contrast, as AgNP exposure rate increased, zooplankton abundance generally increased while biomass and species richness declined. We also observed a shift in the size structure of zooplankton communities in the chronic AgNP treatments. In the pulse treatments, zooplankton abundance and biomass were reduced suggesting short periods of high AgNP concentrations affect zooplankton communities differently than chronic exposures. We found no evidence that capping agent affected AgNP toxicity on either community. Overall, our study demonstrates variable AgNP toxicity between trophic levels with stronger AgNP effects on zooplankton. Such effects on zooplankton are troubling and indicate that AgNP contamination could affect aquatic food webs.

Fifty streams, located in southern Ontario, Canada, were visited in September 2008 to investigate the effect of varying land use, land cover, and associated resource inputs on water column bacterial abundance (BACT), production (BP), and extracellular enzyme activity and stoichiometry. Principle components analysis was used to summarize landscape data, producing three components (PCs), which explained 79.2% of the variability in the data. The PCs grouped into the following gradients: (PC1) urban land use and continuous annual cropping to wetland-like cover, (PC2) rotational cropping to forest-like cover, and (PC3) increasing rural and agricultural land uses with increasing watershed size. These landscape gradients created imbalanced resource availability. Nutrient resources were more abundant in streams with more intensive anthropogenic land uses, but carbon availability was primarily controlled by the abundance of natural land covers (wetland and wooded areas). BACT, BP, and enzyme activities were positively related primarily to nutrient availability and/or anthropogenic land use (Stepwise R 2 range: 0.33-0.73). The ratio of b-glucosidase to alkaline phosphatase activity approached a 1:1 balance with increasing anthropogenic land use, decreased wetland and forest cover, and increased total dissolved nitrogen. The ratio of leucine-aminopeptidase to alkaline phosphatase activity approached 1:1 with both increased dissolved organic carbon and nitrogen. Moreover, enzyme C:N:P ratios moved closer to 1:1:1 with faster water column bacterial turnover times. These results suggest that water column microbial communities are better able to balance resource availability with growth in streams receiving nutrient subsidies from anthropogenic sources and under these conditions when carbon resources increase.